As of yesterday I am 25 years old. I have been working with custom content since I was 11. Almost everyone I met in the span of then until 2009 is long gone. Almost everyone had dropped custom content and communication related long before my days with Brood War came to a close, and those who did not entered the industry and immediately drifted away. Only the few remain, and none so devoted to the cause of creation as I.

Even today, despite the ever growing lethargy and mental problems, I am pursuing a grand project that will continue to test my archaic skillset. I have achieved nothing of value and nor will I ever, but I have yet to wholly expend my desire to dream and build of those dreams.

Throughout the years of my time creating projects of various nature I have attempted and failed to create my life's work, Throne of Armageddon. I did, however, reach a grand total of 1341 pages, 600 thousand words, before I declared it dead. I attempted music composition, 3d graphics, animation, rendering, voice acting, and much more in my everlasting pursuit to bring my dreams to life.

At the end of my career I even attempted public casting of games like Starcraft 2, and produced a variety of feature-length compilations, Let's Play's, reviews, and more. I spent two years regularly producing such content before stumbling on Black Sun: Salvation and ultimately overextending my abilities and creating a total trainwreck.

2012 is in full swing with insane heat and overwhelming odds of exhaustion, anxiety, and lethargy. The days today are as hard as days have ever been, but still the dreams have not yet died. Even as the old communities I once breathed life into slip away from memory from all but the most stalwart of caretakers, and even as the very desire to create custom content vanishes from the industry, I have not yet entirely given up hope to one day make all of my years working on this garbage be worth it.

I have no desire to work for another but myself, I have no desire to sell my work or even to release it publicly. My desire lays in my dreams, and my aspirations to bring those dreams to life, that I may burn away the pain and sorrow of the dying world around me.

I attempted many projects and have failed them all in some shape or form. Some failures grand, some drawn out and painful, some silent and expected. To this day I yearn for the opportunity to make right the wrongs and undo the past, even though I am alone and selfless in this goal.

This is what it means to aspire. To never surrender to fear or doubt. You will fall time and time again, and every time you try to pick yourself up it will become harder and harder to do so. But to abandon your dreams is to abandon your very purpose to exist. If you are too cowardly to end your life as I am, why not then break yourself upon these iron gates, and challenge fate one last time? For every breath is the hardest breath of the day, and every morning it takes herculean effort to force yourself to rise from your bed... but for that one chance to change the future, that one chance to bring my dreams to life...

I have not finished a project since AO, and AO wasn't legitimately finished. Nor was it a worthwhile investment of time. Therefore, I have done nothing of value.

I'm actually kind of looking forward to seeing if Project Eternity is any good. I'm very skeptical about Obsidian, especially after the clusterfuck that was NWN2. But I think the key to starting a project again might be to stick to a 2d engine. The resources I have are infinitely usable in a 2d platform, but cross conversion to 3d (e.g. sc2) is apparently too much for most developers to support, or there are other complications I lack the mental fortitude to deal with (UDK and programming).

I have been mortally depressed this entire year, and largely because I have been unable to work on anything. I have lived day by day, struggling to keep control of my emotions and my willpower. Every time I thought I had the answer, like when I made this OP, I was wrong. On paper, all worthwhile ideas, all plausible... but in practice, I've long lost the strength I may have once had that these dreams demanded of me.

For the moment, life is stable... the fear and worry of the early year are long gone. My health is declining, but not at an accelerated rate. Some days I am very weak and exhausted, sometimes I am feeling better. Maybe it is nearly time to try to finish my last LP.